U.S.-China Nuclear Talks Stymied by Distrust and Miscommunication

The two powers are struggling to come together on a shared policy for their nuclear weapons, with everything from mixed messaging to shoddy translations making cooperation harder and a deal less likely

Poor communication and divergent goals are hampering efforts by China
and the United States to improve their understanding of each other's
nuclear-arms policy, issue experts said on Wednesday.

In more than 10 years of bilateral talks on their respective
nuclear-weapons programs, the United States and China are frequently
"like chickens talking with ducks," according to Gregory Kulacki, a
senior analyst in the Union of Concerned Scientists' Global Security
Program. Neither side really believes or comprehends what the other is
saying, he said.

"It's like an old couple stuck in a bad relationship that neither one
really wants to leave," Kulacki said. "They both know what the problem
is and they just don't have the energy to argue about it anymore."

Kulacki contends the crux of the problem lies with Washington's
insistence that Beijing be more transparent about the size and
capabilities of its nuclear arsenal.

China counters it is already more transparent than the United States
about its deterrent posture as it has a declared absolute no-first-use
policy while Washington has only pledged not to conduct nuclear strikes
on states without atomic arsenals of their own that are also in good standing with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Estimates of the size of China's nuclear arsenal range from
approximately 155 to 240 warheads. Beijing is projected to have as many
as 75 long-range nuclear-capable missiles in addition to 120
intermediate- and medium-range missiles, the U.S. Defense Department
said in a 2011 assessment of China's armed forces.

Comparatively, the United States possesses 1,790 fielded long-range
nuclear warheads and 822 deployed ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic
missiles and nuclear bombers, according to figures compiled in September
by the State Department. As of May 2010, the United States had declared
a total nuclear arsenal of 5,113 active and reserve warheads.

Unlike the United States, China keeps its nuclear warheads separate
from launch vehicles, according to an official Chinese military
textbook.

The Obama administration has publicized the number and types of
warheads held in the U.S. nuclear stockpile but Beijing argues that
providing similar information would make its nuclear weapons more
vulnerable to a potential disarming first strike by the United States.

"Beijing claims that it cannot talk about those things because it's
essential to their strategy for [the United States] not to know,"
Kulacki told a Washington audience at a forum on improving U.S.-Chinese
nuclear discussions.

However, the Obama administration is unsatisfied with that stance and
argues that a no-first-use pledge would be small comfort in a moment of
crisis when lives are at stake, he continued.

This distrust in turn is insulting to Chinese representatives at
bilateral nuclear talks, which have been taking place at varying levels
for years.

Beijing views the U.S. insistence on more transparency in nuclear
stockpile numbers as an attempt to shift the focus away from China's
urging that the United States declare a no-first-use policy, according
to Kulacki, who has spent years encouraging and facilitating dialogues
between U.S. and Chinese analysts on nuclear arms control issues.

In the October issue of Arms Control Today,
Kulacki wrote, "it is difficult for Chinese analysts to appreciate why a
country with overwhelming conventional military superiority is unable
to make a basic confidence-building commitment that a much weaker China
finds acceptable."

It was only this May that the first official senior-level strategic
security talks were held between the two powers. Other meetings have
been at the less formal levels.

One notable success of these informal discussions by U.S. and Chinese
arms-control specialists was the 2006 agreement to write a bilingual
glossary of nuclear-weapons terminology with mutually accepted
definitions, Kulacki said.

Faced with an impasse on the no-first-use issue, the Obama
administration is seeking to engage in nuclear discussions with the
People's Liberation Army's Second Artillery rather than with the Chinese
Defense Ministry, which is more of a "military-diplomacy place" and not
a decision-making body, according Li Bin, a noted expert on
nuclear-disarmament issues in China.

"I think DOD is right to find someone else to talk with," Li told
forum attendees. However, the Second Artillery, which has responsibility
over China's nuclear missiles, is not the right body to be talking
with, he said.

Unlike the U.S. Strategic Command, the Second Artillery is not
particularly active or experienced in nuclear dialogues, said Li, a
senior associate in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's
Nuclear Policy Program. With time, officers from the Second Artillery
could be ready to take part in security talks; until then, Li
recommended the United States reach out to the Chinese nuclear-weapon
laboratories for informal people-to-people exchanges.

Not wholly trusting of the answers
they are receiving from the Chinese Defense Ministry on its nuclear
deterrent posture, U.S. security planners have turned to poring over
internal Chinese military literature, which is now published by a large
number of state institutions.

"We're looking for the worst kind of thing we can find," Kulacki said.

It is difficult for U.S. analysts to discern which authors are
credible and actually speak for decision-makers in the Chinese
government, he added. This had led to instances in which U.S.
researchers have assumed that musings found on personal websites of
private Chinese citizens or poorly sourced international news stories
about rumored changes in China's nuclear posture represented Beijing's
actual thinking, according to the specialist.

Kulacki blamed much of the United States' misreading of Chinese
nuclear-weapons policy on the "debilitating bad" quality of U.S.
government translations of military texts and other sources.

Official U.S. translations of Chinese nuclear-weapons terms
misidentify parts of speech, obscure the correct identification of the
subject of the sentence, or omit key phrases -- all of which
significantly interferes with the ability to interpret the text's
meaning, he said.

"The translation is abysmal. It's just bad. My guess is they're
starting with machine translations and then fixing the English," Kulacki
said. "This is the reason dialogue is critical. You have to get
together at a table and talk about what you actually mean."

In an e-mail message to Global Security Newswire, Pentagon
press officer Lt. Col. James Gregory said, "Department of Defense
analysis of any U.S.-China strategic issue is based on a variety of
sources, both classified and unclassified, to include direct
interactions with both PRC [People's Republic of China] government and
military officials, as well as authoritative PRC writings.

"When translations are necessary, DOD uses official translations and
we do not rely on either private blog sites or unofficial translations,"
Gregory stated.

A key point of concern for U.S. defense planners is their perception
that Beijing has secretly altered its policy of using its nuclear
weapons only as a means of deterring attack to also using them as tool
of coercion.

In a classified military textbook published in 2003 for use by the
Second Artillery, one scenario involves a conventional war between the
sides where a superior U.S. force is bombing or threatening to bomb
Chinese atomic energy plants, large population centers, and key
infrastructure.

In this scenario, Chinese military policy permits Beijing to respond
by threatening the United States with a nuclear attack. These threats
are to be conveyed through signaling that would gradually be escalated
-- beginning with a media propaganda campaign and verbal warnings,
followed by nuclear-strike drills, and ending with the naming of which
U.S. cities would come under nuclear attack.

"The whole thing is about 'shock and awe' for them," said Kulacki,
who has translated sections of the textbook. "The goal is to try to
figure a way to knock us off balance, to keep us confused about where
things could [lead] to in an escalating scenario" so that the United
States decides to halt its conventional-military campaign against China.

Kulacki underlined that the textbook, entitled The Science of Operations of the Second Artillery,
clearly states the policy of no first use still holds even in the
scenario described above. "If you follow the text, clearly they are
talking about bluffing."

The importance and centrality of China's no-first-use posture is
addressed repeatedly in the textbook, Kulacki said. "They tell their
soldiers over and over again in this text that this is really important,
that this is a fundamental part of their strategy," he said.

Kulacki recommended the Pentagon devote more resources to improving
its internal Mandarin translation capabilities in order to avoid further
misunderstandings of Chinese nuclear and military policy.

"We have a lot of resources that we devote to national security and
this is kind of blown over as if it doesn't really matter," he said.
"This really matters. It's not glamorous, but it's essential stuff so
that when we actually do get together we can [have an actual
conversation]."

Li, who is also a professor of international relations at Tsinghua
University in Beijing, suggested that the United States continue to
support Track 1.5 diplomacy with China. This type of engagement
typically involves high-ranking officials or empowered nongovernment
officials engaging in informal dialogue.

He also recommended the United States translate another document --
the Chinese military's official glossary book of terminology.

In order to successfully engage with China on its nuclear-weapons
policy, Washington needs to make a "long-term investment" in fostering
and supporting more U.S. analysts and academics with China-specific
language skills, nuclear expertise and cultural understanding, Kulacki
said.

This article was originally published in Global Security Newswire, produced independently by National Journal Group under contract with the Nuclear Threat Initiative. NTI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan group working to reduce global threats from nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

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